There are so many. As health care providers and as a nation, we have been acutely aware of the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color and, more specifically, on the African American community. In April, nearly three-fourths of patients who died fro…
“My partner doesn’t want me to come back home now that I’ve come to the hospital. He is worried I’ll come back and infect him and his parents. I have nowhere to go”. Fear and guilt were palpable in the young woman sitting before me. She had decided to …
In April 2020, Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency medicine physician from New York-Presbyterian Medical Center, came to the University of Virginia Medical Center, not as a physician, but as a patient. She had been working at the height of the COVID-19 epide…
We can’t un-bungle our nation’s COVID-19 response. Political leaders acted too slowly; health agencies committed unforced errors with testing kits and, amid the confusion, an information fog settled over the land. Americans remain afraid, perplexed, an…
“I can’t fight you anymore. It’s you I’m fighting for.” -Ordinary Love by U2 I’m exhausted. As the pandemic rages on, the mental toll of dealing with COVID-19 has started to wear on me. As a practicing hospitalist …
“I can’t fight you anymore. It’s you I’m fighting for.” -Ordinary Love by U2 I’m exhausted. As the pandemic rages on, the mental toll of dealing with COVID-19 has started to wear on me. As a practicing hospitalist …
Game of Thrones has become a focus of American pop culture over the last eight years. Even now, almost a year after the finale aired, people are still discussing the impact of the show and the controversial last season. Many of us were hoping to finall…
Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest pork producer, closed its Sioux Falls, SD, slaughterhouse after many Smithfield employees grew sick. Tyson Foods closed its Columbus Junction, IA pork slaughterhouse in April, according to the Wall Street Jo…
Drinking the Kool-Aid Across the USA recently, demonstrators wielding, “Stop the madness! It is just a cold virus!” and “Let me work” signs, chanting “Freedom now” and “Fire Fauci,” dangerously demanded a…
“Would an STI cause abdominal pain?” someone in a class discussion asked. “Well, when I had chlamydia, I didn’t have abdominal pain,” I responded truthfully. Instantly, the group went silent. “OK, Jay. That’s … TMI,” someone else in the group quickly r…
